Well, no kidding! Of course people who are more sensitive to rejection are going to get depressed more easily \u2013 I don\u2019t need a study to tell you that!<\/p>\n
But here\u2019s the interesting part: not all people who are sensitive to rejection are equally prone to depression, and there may be interventions that can help protect people sensitive to rejection from depression.<\/p>\n
Researchers have known for a while now that people higher in rejection sensitivity<\/i> \u2013 the tendency to anticipate rejection, perceive rejection more easily, and take rejection to heart more \u2013 are more likely to become depressed. However, not a lot of work has been done to figure out why<\/i> exactly this is the case.<\/p>\n
To shed some light on how rejection sensitivity relates to depression risk, researchers from University of North Carolina at Greensboro undertook a set of studies<\/a> looking at people\u2019s depressive symptoms and sensitivity to rejection.<\/p>\n
First, the studies were able to replicate a finding that\u2019s already known: beyond just being sensitive to rejection, people who anticipate<\/i> rejection more are at the highest risk for depression. That is, people who anxiously expect to be rejected in advance tend to have more depressive symptoms.<\/p>\n
But the studies went further and showed something new: people who anticipate rejection more and people at risk for depression share a tendency to interpret ambiguous situations in negative ways. In other words, people who anticipate rejection may be at risk for depression because they have more of a negative interpretation bias<\/i>.<\/p>\n
The idea that people at risk for depression have an underlying tendency to interpret things in a negative light is one that has been researched a lot lately. The theory goes that people prone to depression perceive the world differently: they\u2019re more likely to see ambiguous or neutral situations in negative terms.<\/p>\n
The new research shows that this negative interpretation bias may also be the link between rejection sensitivity and depression. People who are sensitive to rejection and have more of a negative interpretation bias are more likely to become depressed.<\/p>\n
On the flip side, that means reducing negative interpretation bias in people more sensitive to rejection makes those people less likely to develop depression. The new research doesn\u2019t just show a link between rejection sensitivity and depression \u2013 it points out a possible way to break that link.<\/p>\n
Prompting people who anxiously anticipate rejection to question overly-negative interpretations they hold may make them more resilient to depression. So, call it a positive interpretation bias, but this study seems like good news overall!<\/p>\n
What d\u2019you think? Share in the comments!<\/p>\n
Image: FreeImages.com\/Alex Strenzke<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Well, no kidding! Of course people who are more sensitive to rejection are going to get depressed more easily \u2013 I don\u2019t need a study to tell you that! But here\u2019s the interesting part: not all people who are sensitive to rejection are equally prone to depression, and there may be interventions that can help Read More<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-76753","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/healthmedicinet.com\/i\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/76753","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/healthmedicinet.com\/i\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/healthmedicinet.com\/i\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/healthmedicinet.com\/i\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/healthmedicinet.com\/i\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=76753"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/healthmedicinet.com\/i\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/76753\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/healthmedicinet.com\/i\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=76753"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/healthmedicinet.com\/i\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=76753"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/healthmedicinet.com\/i\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=76753"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}